


dark satanic weather factory

by deepandlovelydark



Series: Ecstasy in Cosmogone [9]
Category: Cultist Simulator, Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: Crossover, Deep Lore, Dreams, general Neathy weirdness, queer, the WORM - Freeform, the sigil for an unreckoned kindness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 19:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15126083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: She witnesses; she waits; she shivers in the unlight of Kingeater's Castle, watching the Sea of Statues. Occasionally, she is prepared to swear, they blink.That is the hour when the arcana should sing out, but the lace cards fly apart, tenuous and fragile, the looming pattern producing only discordance. No rhyme nor reason.Perhaps, if she waits long enough, the secret histories will start happening around her.Perhaps all she needs is a programme.





	dark satanic weather factory

**Author's Note:**

> I feel this reads better after "Fulgent Engineering" and "Alterations in Viric," but if you don't wish to wade through all that...this takes place a few years after the Tireless Mechanic has left your ship with his glorious engine (there's a reason your scion doesn't get to keep it). 
> 
> He's friends with a smuggler who talks too much to devils, and a haruspex at Kingeater's Castle, an old shipmate of his who helped him out with the Impeller. That should be enough to be getting on with.

_faint tinge of Stone's light on the horizon. bitter chill, salted driftweed. another day passing, no more successful than the last._

_I fancy I may have forgotten how to speak._

"Try it," a voice says behind her; and she whirls around, to the first company she can recall in...eight months? Nine?

"I stood on the battlement an hour ago," the Cynical Herald says, the low tenor of her voice husky and ragged. She coughs, draws herself a cup of melted lifeberg water, starts again in a more accustomed key. "There was no ship to be seen."

"Well, we weren't there yet. Wonderful how fast a full-throttled impeller can move, you know?"

Ah. 

That certainly would explain it.

* * *

 

The Unrepentant Smuggler looks wry and relaxed, from neatly groomed mustache to his mildly anachronistic boots. He admires her small indulgences, rough-hewn stone shelves and a cranky fuel-fed engine providing some driblets of warmth. He waves hullo at her Polythreme poncho, which rustles uncertainly before allowing him to stroke it just so, beneath the tassels. He cracks jokes. 

He does not, the Cynical Herald reflects, seem like a man who spent half a Zee voyage raving mad and tied up in his own hammock. Then again, the mutual friend who introduced them is a player of the Great Game; appearances count for less than nothing in the Neath, but especially with that lot. 

“Ever since our trip to the Shattered Citadel,” he says, sprawling comfortably across a crate. “I tried to loot a spintria that the Mechanic told me not to, and, well, things got a little sticky. And by sticky I mean nightmarish. Not the usual run about thunder or tails, either, this is something else.” 

That remains to be seen. “No promises, you understand? Secret histories are fraught territory at the best of times.”

The Smuggler shrugs with evident lack of comprehension. “Better than nothing. We’ve been trying honey, laudanum, warm airag- do you know how foetid warm mare’s milk is? And none of it’s done any good. I just keep on dreaming.”

“If nightmares frighten you, go back to the Surface,” the Herald says indifferently. “Or simply wait it out. Even in the Neath, you’ll find that dreams have a tendency to cycle into complacency eventually.”

He glances her over, with the practiced eye of a born hustler, and speaks one word: “Illopoly.”

After that, __ it, she has to listen. 

* * *

The Fulgent Impeller is far too lofty an engine for the  _Physius,_  dominating the tiny cabin; but the launch’s nigh-intolerable heat is deliciously welcome to her bones. Anyhow, their after-dinner Sangiovese is perfectly chilled, after a stint in the iceless ice box. 

“I take it the Mechanic’s as inventive as ever,” the Herald says, cutting herself neat slices of imported Parmesan. “To say nothing of thoughtful- I wouldn’t have expected such an appropriate tithe for my trouble. Or any at all, come to that.”

“Oh, well, that’s Ma- that’s the Mechanic for you,” the Smuggler agrees. “Do you mind if we get down to business now? Only I’d rather get it all out of the way before he wakes up. Talking about nightmares makes him real nervous.”

She studies the sleeping engineer, blissfully comatose now the ship’s safely docked, and nods. “All right. Is it always the same one? Are there patterns?”

“It starts with a desk. Faded viric-”

“It would have to be.”

“Which is far from my favourite colour,” the Smuggler says irritably, “but in the dream, I could practically hug the thing. Because there’s nothing else in the entire universe- literally nothing else to look at, except this desk and a pack of cards. So obviously I start laying out the cards for a game of solitaire, because what else are you going to do? Only that’s when it gets weird.”

“Trionfi,” the Herald murmurs, and draws a worn case from her pocket. “Do you recognise any of these, by chance?”

He rummages through the pack. “A few. The Sun-in-Rags, that’s familiar. The Watchman. The Red Grail-”

“You needn’t invoke them,” the Herald says rather sharply, over the sleeper’s choking snore; she brushes an unkempt lock from his face with unthought familiarity, and he breathes easier again. “How new to the Neath are you?“

“Couple of years.” The Smuggler smiles crookedly. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it, however groovy the zeppelins are. Sorry. Only I don’t know what else you’d call these beings…”

“Don’t. Just point, and describe your symptoms.”

He does, for the following hour, while she takes notes in graceful Italian script. Possibly he probes her knowledge of the occult for his own purposes, but her suspicion ebbs as she listens to his fraught accounting; it seems the Smuggler’s unaware of the greater import of his dreaming, and just as clearly doesn’t wish to. 

“After a while I’m not myself any more. The longer I’m playing, the more natural it feels to me- if I spend nights walking through city streets, I'll be weary to exhaustion. I tend people’s wounds with hands that understand scalpels better than control columns. Wake up expecting to be young and beautiful and ravenous, when I shouldn’t be any of those things.” The Smuggler picks up a battered cap, toys absently with an unravelling thread. “Simple hypnosis would be a piece of cake by comparison. So. Can you help me?”

Putting off the answer will be false kindness. “I can guide you, certainly. Lead you through the Mansus, bring you to apotheosis, but there’s a price. Though one,” she says, not looking at the innocent in the shadows, “that you might find easier to pay than he would.”

“Go on,” he says, with ready eagerness. 

“Doom,” she returns. “Not yours, other people’s. Acquaintances, friends, lovers. Special constables who’ll trace your trail. The prisoners who gave away everything they were, to be broken for your plans- and you will break them, before all’s well. The great appeal of Seeking,” the Herald says, as she links up the wood-whispers, “is its solitude, the joys of private watches in the night and hugging secrets to your own heart. Cults are another affair altogether. But perhaps none of this worries you.”

“Not so much, now you’ve put it that way,” the Smuggler says, momentarily sober. “Sounds like I’ll just have to put up with this. Doomed to a lot of tedious clerical work every night, whoo.”

“Then the dreams will continue. Worsen, I should expect. Best improve your shining Hours, or find yourself consumed by them.“

“Which is the Neath all over, isn’t it…so it’s spending every night of my life wrapped up in these visions until I pay off the sacrifices?”

“Yes.”

Improbably, the Smuggler is smirking. “Guess I’m gonna have to ask the Mechanic for the recipe to that Darkdrop mess of his. He did warn me it might come to that.”

“A little more than that. Consider yourself under a geas from now on, as far as cardplay goes.“

That’s when he heaves the sigh. “Aw. Well, that’s okay. I never could beat anybody at Texas hold-em, anyway- hang about. How am I supposed to get by in London without the arcana? I mean, I wouldn’t be able to chat up factions, or find the way to my club, or anything…you sure that’s necessary?”

“There are…unspoken resonances,” the Herald says. “Lore has a way of drawing like to like, water always finds its level. You’ll find yourself making these connections whether you want to or no.”

“How about no,” the Smuggler mutters, and abruptly downs the remainder of his forgotten wine. “Okay. So it’s a strictly undercover, jati existence for me from now on- well, that’s okay. I wasn’t exactly a society highlight in the first place. Anyway, the Mechanic will always have my back.“

The affection, the swaggering intimacy, of the expression he casts at his partner takes the Herald off-guard. Not for what it says about him, but herself.

Natural shipboard camaraderie, yes, conversations left studious unspoken, to be sure; but nothing to justify this dry kean of jealousy, crouching in her heart. No one had gainsaid her exile here, a ceaseless vigil at the loneliest place in the Neath, nobody had questioned her sanity, for she'd been so sure of herself then. Not now: her thoughts move more sluggishly than her hands, these days. She lets her pen scrawl a word over paper, in shaking script:  _corrosive._

Here is a man, persuasive and fascinating and brimful of mystique; and here is his lover. Suffering from an affliction so exotic, no London physic could possibly promise him a cure. 

“He came all the way here with you,” the Herald says, in a flat tone that threatens no more than it promises. “I wonder why. Kingeater's Castle is about the last place anyone would seek refuge.”

“Yeah, I asked about that. He said…something about Dockers,“ the Smuggler says, chewing thoughtfully on his mustache. “Your being shipmates together, before, he trusts you. And didn’t want anybody else getting hold of me, in case…well, I dunno, they wanted to turn me inside out to rip a hole through the space-time continuum, or something kooky like that.”

That reasoning, now, sounds like a certain spy of her recollection. “In short, you’re at my mercy.”

“Completely,” the Smuggler agrees, with perfect self satisfaction. He winks. 

She grimaces.

* * *

There is very little for the Mechanic to repair at Kingeater’s; but he finds a pile of murder-dimmed knives and busies himself sharpening them to usefulness. Which is just about typical, the Smuggler figures. 

“…so. All’s well?”

“Uh-huh,” the Smuggler says complacently. “Slept like a top last night- or should I say, slept as hard as you? You were sure out of it yesterday. Missed a nice roasted blemmigan.”

“Hey, nursemaiding you here from Godfall wasn’t an easy job. To say nothing of sacrificing all those zee-stories.”

The Smuggler shifts uncomfortably. “She says you’re a damned optimistic fool, by the way. Well, not in so many words, it was in more elegant language, but you know what I mean.“

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Said that it was ridiculous to think that a curse like that could be lifted without blood being spilt, but fortunately she was clever enough to dissipate it harmlessly. So bully for your old navigator and all that.”

“That’s not what I had in mind at all. Not that it’s any of my business, but I thought she’d try to take the doom on herself. I mean, look at this place,” the Mechanic says, waving at the surrounding ruins. “It’s ghastly, it’s freezing cold, and the only company is the occasional batch of half-dead zailors, who’ll probably try to eat you on sight. Some quiet warm dreaming about cities and real people would have done her a lot of good, I thought. But if she decided it was too dangerous, I suppose that’s her decision.”

“That tool,” the Smuggler says, his voice suddenly etched with hostility. “The one you told me not to touch.”

“What about it?”

“You specifically pointed out that thing in the Citadel, just to warn me not to touch it. Me. Your notoriously greedy, treasure hunting buddy.”

“Now, I wouldn’t have said that. It’d be impolite.”

“…did you hijack me? Did I spend a month blithering out of my skull so that you could move a curse from A to B, just to cheer up your ex-shipmate?”

“Don’t be silly,“ the Mechanic says loftily. “If it was that important to me, why wouldn’t I have done it myself?”

The Smuggler considers. “Cos messing around with dreaming on that level might have earned you more unwanted attention in Parabola, and I know how much you'd hate that. What ever happened to that worm, anyway?”

“What worm?”

“The one you put in the suncatcher. The one that was trying to kill you, so you couldn’t sleep for ages. That worm.”

“Oh,” the Mechanic says, with relief. “We gave it to the Khanate to get rid of, they’re good at disposing of stuff like that. And that was a snake. Not the same thing at all.”

“You sure? I know I’ve seen that in old fairy tales- worms are dragons, dragons are snakey sort of things…”

Above them, in a half-ruined tower, the Herald makes a note to herself. 

_A preposterous suggestion._ _And yet, and yet- if the Khanate’s unwanted visitors were merely cast off elsewhere, does the war of illusions continue on another plane? Will I find my Mechanic’s foe there, reincarnated as some viscid ouroboros worm?_

_Strange to say, but I look forward to finding out…_


End file.
